Hum If You Don't Know the Words

by Bianca Marais

What greater gift can you give another than to say: I see you, I hear you, and you are not alone?

Only those who live in proper houses and are safe from the elements will find novelty in sleeping outside under the cover of a piece of cloth.

I would not like to discover firsthand the kind of care a white doctor would take with a black life in a country like this. I wonder if their oath to care for human life is stronger than their prejudice.

It was a brick with a piece of paper tied around it. Someone had written “Die you queer freaks” in big block letters. Words once again buzzed over me as the men discussed the futility of calling the police and wondered if another attack was likely. I clutched the brick in one hand and Johan’s hand in the other. I was mute. I didn’t know what to say in a world where people were hated and attacked for not being the right color, not speaking the right language, not worshipping the right god or not loving the right people; a world where hatred was the common language, and bricks, the only words.

Black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Christian, Jew, Englishman, Afrikaner, adult, child, man, woman: we were all there together, but somehow that eclectic jumble of labels was overwritten by the one classification that applied to every person there: “friend.”

“What’s your favorite book?” I asked. “They do not write books for people like me.” That was sad. Everyone should have books they could see themselves in.

I do not think it is brave to pick up a gun or to carry a bomb, but it is brave to open yourself up to the potential for loss and disappointment when you have already felt too much of its sting.

Or maybe it’s just that everyone needs someone to hate, and it’s easier to treat people terribly if you tell yourself they’re nothing like you.”